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http://4realz.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/43/

Pbwiki_bubblemap
Exactly one year ago today, the Real Estate Cafe participated in a radio broadcast entitled, "The Beginning of the End of the Bubble" which featured some of our recorded interviews.  Today, we celebrated that anniversary with more good news:  the leading real estate technology news service featured our real estate bubble maps as an example of "Real Estate 2.0."  Our interactive maps are getting attention because they allow users to post their own examples of a falling prices, particularly homes selling for below assessed value in Greater Boston.  We created the bubble maps because news reports, including one this evening, continue to point to modest declines in median prices as evidence of a "soft landing for the housing market.

Coauthoring the opposite of crime maps

Heartcrossing500

Reading MLPodcast‘s interview with Platial.Com Co-Founder Di-Ann Eisnor, what excites me about Platial is the opportunity for anyone to map what they LOVE about their neighborhoods and communities.  As housing markets slide into downcycles across the country, consumers will make homebuying decisions less on financial return and more on quality of life.  That’s where interactive, community mapping comes in.

But the transparency that Web 2.0 enables also comes with a "dark side," so here’s a challenge / invitation: 

It’s discouraging for me to see how much attention the Chicago Crime map is getting, not because it isn’t a brilliant web 2.0 application but because it focuses on the worst of humanity.  Some of us have begun to talk about creating the "opposite of crime maps."  If there are dozens of types of crime that can be mapped, shouldn’t there be at least that many ways to map "social capital" or good old-fashioned neighborliness?

1st user documents falling housing prices on Bubble Map

Walkerst_071506_3 The first user has added two local properties to an experimental Real Estate Bubble Map created by The Real Estate Cafe to involve consumers in
the process of tracking falling housing prices.  Located at 21 and 30 Walker Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the contributions document an emerging trend:  both sales prices and asking prices are falling below assessed values in once overheated housing markets in Greater Boston.  Despite the prevailing myth is that housing prices never fall in Cambridge, the city is among 66 housing markets that have experienced significant price corrections over the past two decades.  21 Walker St. sold recently for approximately $150,000 below its assessed value; and the asking price at 30 Walker St. has fallen more than $110,000 below it’s assessed value.  That property went under agreement in 11 days in 2003 when it sold for $1,275,000.  After six months on the market, the asking price is now $50,000 less than the sales price three years ago.  (See comments on map for more detail on both properties and approximately 150 others in Greater Boston)

Both Walker Street properties are in walking distance to Harvard University, where an "Un-Conference" on Citizen Journalism will be held, Monday, August 7, 2006. It is hoped that other house hunters will create local bubble maps to protect fellow home buyers from overpaying in "extremely overvalued" housing markets nationwide. 

Boston bubble bloggers begin meeting OFFLINE

Fellow Boston bubble bloggers,

Over the past few months, a number of us have corresponded about getting together OFFLINE with other bubble bloggers in Boston / New England.  If getting together for one or both of the proposed events below make sense to you and your blog readers, feel free to pass this on or link to it.

1st Boston bubble blogger meeting:  Exploratory meeting for "citizen journalists"

Several Boston bubble bloggers have confirmed their participation in the following.  If your schedule permits, join us for any of these three:

1.  Starbucks (Mass. Ave & Wendell St. in Cambridge) from 6:30-6:55pm;
2.  Berkman Center (see link for location) from 7:00pm to 8:00 or 8:30pm.
3.  Optional discussion over coffee / dinner afterwards, (Maybe Darwin’s, JohnnyDs, or another location.  Call cell phone 617-388-5818 to confirm.)

Berkman’s guest speaker from Newsvine should help all of us get more visibility for our individual blogs and enhance our mutual goal, as independent citizen journalists, of informing consumers about real estate market trends in Greater Boston / Massachusetts.

2nd Bubble Blogger meeting:  Reviewing & analyzing MAR stats

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